Increase In Incarceration Research Articles

Aleitamento materno exclusivo entre pessoas em situação de cárcere: abordagem interseccional e abolicionista para análise da produção científica no Brasil entre 2000 e 2022

Abstract In Brazil, there has been an uncontrolled increase in incarceration of women, and this situation is not interrupted during periods of pregnancy or lactation. A scoping review was carried out to systematically map and synthesize evidence published since 2000 on the practice of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) among imprisoned people in Brazil. Intersectionality and penal abolitionism were the theoretical-methodological approaches used to analyze the studies. A total of 25 studies were selected, 90% of which were published from 2010 to 2020. In the context of maternal and child health, they mainly exposed the difficulties of maintaining EBF in prison, including the lack of definition of a minimum period of stay for the baby, the lack of professional guidance for the practice of EBF, and the inadequate structure of prison units. In the area of law, the studies reported tensions between the disciplinary order and children’s irreducible human right to food. The studies focused the investigation on the mothers’ experiences, but did not question the practical and historical forms of imprisonment, especially regarding Black, female, and poor bodies. Critical and propositional approaches are necessary to produce evidence toward the guarantee of rights to health and food.

Work in prisons: Considerations on racial inequalities and labor activities in Brazilian prisons

The problem of violence has been studied by several researchers who analyze contemporary society. In these debates, reflections on the involvement of young people in crime, the increase in incarceration of the black population and the importance of public policies for the prevention of this phenomenon are common. The Federal Constitution of Brazil - CRFB of 1988 and Law 7.210/84 of Penal Execution (LEP) show that educational and work activities must be carried out by the prison population, mainly because they represent efficient mechanisms in the rehabilitation of inmates. This research aims to analyze the criteria used by the penitentiaries to select the convicts considered apt to develop productive activities, verifying, above all, if the convicts' race, color, or ethnicity interfere in their possibilities of access to work activities. The methodology used consisted of the literature review produced on this topic specifically in Brazil in the last five years. The data obtained revealed aspects that allow the permanence of an unequal society, which violates rights guaranteed in the Magna Carta and in the Criminal Executions Law. Among them, the persistence of racial inequalities in prisons, the overcrowding and precariousness in prisons and, above all, the neglect of the public power in not expanding policies aimed at resocialization, stand out. In view of this, the need for the State to intervene in this reality is identified by implementing public policies capable of collaborating with the effectiveness of basic guarantees guaranteed to all citizens, including those who are under deprivation of liberty.

Reflections on Criminal Justice Reform: Challenges and Opportunities

Considerable efforts and resources have been expended to enact reforms to the criminal justice system over the last five decades. Concerns about dramatic increases in violent crime beginning in the late Sixties and accelerating into the 1980s led to the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Crime” that included implementation of more punitive policies and dramatic increases in incarceration and community supervision. More recent reform efforts have focused on strategies to reduce the negative impacts of policing, the disparate impacts of pretrial practices, and better strategies for reducing criminal behavior. Renewed interest in strategies and interventions to reduce criminal behavior has coincided with a focus on identifying “what works.” Recent increases in violence have shifted the national dialog from a focus on progressive reforms to reduce reliance on punitive measures and the disparate impact of the legal system on some groups to a focus on increased investment in “tough on crime” criminal justice approaches. This essay offers some reflections on the “Waged Wars” and the efforts to identify “What Works” based on nearly 40 years of work evaluating criminal justice reform efforts.

Financial strain, the transference of stigma, and residential instability: A qualitative analysis of the long‐term effects of parental incarceration

AbstractObjectiveThis study seeks to document the long‐term effects of parental incarceration on life course by interviewing adults who had a parent incarcerated when they were a child.BackgroundAn exponential increase in incarceration in the late 20th century has produced many adverse effects and increased social disadvantage for families and communities. From the life course perspective, parental incarceration is argued to be a detrimental experience in numerous ways.MethodsThis study utilizes (N = 31) in‐depth qualitative interviews with adult respondents in California who experienced parental incarceration at some point in their life. The study uses descriptive phenomenology to examine the effects of parental incarceration on life course.ResultsThe themes discussed in this study are financial and emotional strain, residential instability, and the transference of stigma. Financial strain and residential instability were associated with many negative effects for children of incarcerated parents. Participants recalled such experiences as consistently moving residencies, attending multiple schools, homelessness and inability to attend school, and lack of household resources. The transference of stigma occurred when a parent's record became a representation of a child's moral worth. Interviewees reported feeling or experiencing stigmatization, in social and professional settings, due to their parent's incarceration or criminal record.ConclusionThis study illuminates how the life course experience of parental incarceration can have significant long‐term impacts on children, potentially placing them at risk. Documenting the intergenerational impacts of mass incarceration on children and families is of societal importance.

The Political Economy of Incarceration in the Cotton South, 1910–1925

A large theoretical literature in sociology connects increases in incarceration to contractions in the demand for labor. But previous research on how the labor market affects incarceration is often functionalist and seldom causal. This article estimates the effect of a shock to the southern agricultural labor market during a time when planters exerted a clear influence over whether workers or potential workers were incarcerated. From 1915 to 1920, a beetle called the boll weevil spread across the state of Georgia, causing cotton yields and the demand for agricultural workers to fall. Using archival records of incarceration in Georgia, the authors find that the boll weevil infestation increased the Black prison admission rate for property crimes by more than a third. The article describes the institutional conditions under which falling labor demand should increase incarceration, clarifies the relationship between incarceration and the economic institutions that replaced slavery, and contributes to a growing literature on incarceration and exploitation in the labor market.

How the Rockefeller Laws Hit the Streets: Drug Policing and the Politics of State Competence in New York City, 1973–1989

Recent studies have shown that the punitive drug laws enacted in the mid-1970s led to a sharp increase in incarceration only in the mid-1980s, when city police departments started policing street-level drug markets much more intensively. The case study of New York City in the wake of the Rockefeller Drug Laws of 1973 presents an explanation. Only when new policing ideas, popular dissatisfaction with street crime, and the revival of the city's fiscal capacity coalesced as part of a larger project to rebuild urban governance in the aftermath of the fiscal crisis of the 1970s did New York turn toward street-level drug enforcement. An examination of the political history of street-level drug enforcement offers a better understanding of the history of New York's war on drugs, as well as a new chronology of the political dynamics of state rebuilding in the 1980s.

Punitive selectivity, racism and over-incarceration in Brazil

The purpose of this article is to analyze racism and social inequality as foundations of over-incarceration in Brazil. The first section discusses the relationship between punitive selectivity and structural racism from a historical perspective. This is followed by an analysis of the relationship between the downgrading of the population's living conditions through the process of neoliberal counter-reforms and the increase in incarceration and naturalization of dehumanizing practices in the prison environment. The third section presents notes on the increase in female incarceration in Brazil for the crime of drug trafficking. The final remarks highlight that, in the neoliberal phase of capitalism, the structural racism that permeates the criminal justice system finds renewed arguments in the “war on drugs”, to legitimize the over-imprisonment of women, poor and black women in particular. The results indicate that the selective criminal logic reiterates the conditions of oppression from the perspective of gender. Women are doubly punished: by the criminal justice system and by the conservative morality that underpin patriarchal oppression. The method used in the analysis is the materialist-dialectic. From the perspective of social totality, we aim to capture the complex and multiple determinations that constitute the object of study. The research methodology is based on literature and document reviews.

Locked into Emissions: How Mass Incarceration Contributes to Climate Change

The phenomenon of mass incarceration has dramatically altered the economic and infrastructural landscape of the United States. These changes have numerous implications regarding the use of fossil fuels, which are the single largest contributor to climate change. The present study argues that mass incarceration creates three social patterns that result in significant increases in industrial emissions. (1) Mass incarceration incentivizes further industrial development through the construction of new prisons and the continued maintenance of existing prisons to house prisoners. (2) The needs of the millions of individuals currently incarcerated in the United States incentivize industrial expansion through the production of goods and materials used inside prisons. (3) Incarcerated individuals are being used to reduce the cost of labor, which expands economic growth. We construct several fixed-effects panel regression models with robust standard errors predicting industrial emissions for U.S. states from 1997 to 2016 to assess how increases in the number of individuals in U.S. state, federal, and private prisons is correlated with industrial emissions over time. We find that increases in incarceration within states are associated with increases in industrial emissions, and that increases in incarceration lead to a more tightly coupled association between gross domestic product per capita and industrial emissions.

Mass incarceration and public health: the association between black jail incarceration and adverse birth outcomes among black women in Louisiana

BackgroundA growing body of evidence is beginning to highlight how mass incarceration shapes inequalities in population health. Non-Hispanic blacks are disproportionately affected by incarceration and criminal law enforcement, an enduring legacy of a racially-biased criminal justice system with broad health implications for black families and communities. Louisiana has consistently maintained one of the highest rates of black incarceration in the nation. Concurrently, large racial disparities in population health persist.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional analysis of all births among non-Hispanic black women in Louisiana in 2014 to identify associations between parish-level (county equivalent) prevalence of jail incarceration within the black population and adverse birth outcomes (N = 23,954). We fit a log-Poisson model with generalized estimating equations to approximate the relative risk of preterm birth and low birth weight associated with an interquartile range increase in incarceration, controlling for confounders. In sensitivity analyses, we additionally adjusted for the parish-level index crime prevalence and analyzed regression models wherein white incarceration was used to predict the risk of adverse birth outcomes in order to quantify the degree to which mass incarceration may harm health above and beyond living in a high crime area.ResultsThere was a significant 3% higher risk of preterm birth among black women associated with an interquartile range increase in the parish-level incarceration prevalence of black individuals, independent of other factors. Adjusting for the prevalence of index crimes did not substantively change the results of the models.ConclusionDue to the positive significant associations between the prevalence of black individuals incarcerated in Louisiana jails and estimated risk of preterm birth, mass incarceration may be an underlying cause of the persistent inequities in reproductive health outcomes experienced by black women in Louisiana. Not only are there economic and social impacts stemming from mass incarceration, but there may also be implications for population health and health inequities, including the persistence of racial disparities in preterm birth and low birth weight.

Chavism and Criminal Policy in Venezuela, 1999-2014

For a long time, the Venezuelan democracy was an exception in South America due to a party system that was based on what was known as the ‘Punto Fijo Pact’. At the start of the 1980s a series of economic, social and political events began to occur, which caused this ‘exceptionalism’ to stagger and disrupt the institutionality of the traditional Venezuelan democratic State. The events led to a deep national crisis and the birth of a new political era. By the end of the 1990s, there had been a significant shift towards left-wing governance. Hugo Chávez Frías subsequently won the presidential elections in 1998. This paper analyzes some aspects of the criminal policies that were implemented during the reign of left-wing leader Chávez till his death in 2013 and thereafter by Chavist party president elect, Nicolás Maduro during 2013-2014. Four stages can be identified in the behavior of incarceration rates. The first stage, from 1999 to 2000, was characterized by the lowest recordings of incarceration rates and the lowest measured percentage of preventive detention in Venezuela in thirty years. The second stage, from 2001 to 2005, saw a slight increase in the incarceration rate which then remained stable. The third stage, from 2006 to 2012, and the fourth stage, from 2013 to 2014, are characterized by sustained increases in preventive detention, incarceration and murder rates.

The Wrong of Mass Punishment

The increase in incarceration of offenders in the United States over the last 40 years has created a system of mass incarceration or mass punishment. While consequentialist theories of punishment may generate considerable doubts about the value of this system, it seems that retributive theories of punishment lack the resources to criticize mass punishment. Because of their focus on individual desert, it seems that they can say nothing about punishment in the aggregate. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for a certain kind of retributivism to question the justice of mass punishment. When retributive punishment is considered as one of the functions of a state whose task is to create and maintain a system of equal freedom for all, then punishment must be justified not only at the individual level but also at the level of the system of punishment as a whole. If the criminal justice system inflicts excessive amounts of punishment in the aggregate, it becomes unjust, not because individual offenders are treated unjustly, but because a policy of relentless prosecution and punishment is not appropriate for a free society.

Reducing Economic Disparities for Female Offenders: The Oxford House Model

ABSTRACTIn the past 30 years the rate of increase in incarceration for females who abuse substances has outpaced that of men. Women have increased health and economic disparities and face barriers to economic mobility, increasing their risk of returning to the criminal justice system. Past research suggests that there is a positive relationship between living in Oxford House and employment wages, yet the impact of having a criminal history on this relationship was unknown. This study used a nationwide sample of 136 women living in Oxford Houses in a regression analysis with length of stay in Oxford House predicting employment wages, and moderated by criminal history. There was a positive relationship between length of stay and wages. Criminal history modified the association between length of stay and wages, and length of stay had a significantly greater impact on wages for women with criminal convictions. The findings provide a contribution to alcohol and drug abuse and economic literature by identifying a setting that decreases economic disparities for women who were formerly incarcerated. Results can inform future policy, research, and the development of gender-sensitive aftercare programs that address the needs of women, assisting transitioning women in reentering mainstream society, and increasing their chances of obtaining and retaining employment.

Household incarceration in early adolescence and risk of premarital first birth

In the second half of the 20th century, the United States experienced a massive increase in incarceration. In response to this growth, a burgeoning scholarship has sought to explore the collateral consequences of incarceration for young children. However, this scholarship has less frequently explored the impact of incarceration on long-term outcomes, how incarceration experienced in periods other than early childhood impacts children, and whether the incarceration of family members other than parents has negative implications for children. Using data from the children of the mothers in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I explore whether household incarceration experienced in early adolescence is associated with a child's risk of growing up to have a premarital first birth. The results suggest that, even after including a rich set of covariates, children who experience household incarceration in early adolescence are at greater risk of having a premarital first birth, particularly when the father or an external household member is incarcerated.

The Institutional Effects of Incarceration: Spillovers From Criminal Justice to Health Care.

The steady increase in incarceration is related to the quality and functioning of the health care system. US states that incarcerate a larger number of people show declines in overall access to and quality of care, rooted in high levels of uninsurance and relatively poor health of former inmates. Providing health care to former inmates would ease the difficulties of inmates and their families. It might also prevent broader adverse spillovers to the health care system. The health care system and the criminal justice system are related in real but underappreciated ways. This study examines the spillover effects of growth in state-level incarceration rates on the functioning and quality of the US health care system. Our multilevel approach first explored cross-sectional individual-level data on health care behavior merged to aggregate state-level data regarding incarceration. We then conducted an entirely aggregate-level analysis to address between-state heterogeneity and trends over time in health care access and utilization. We found that individuals residing in states with a larger number of former prison inmates have diminished access to care, less access to specialists, less trust in physicians, and less satisfaction with the care they receive. These spillover effects are deep in that they affect even those least likely to be personally affected by incarceration, including the insured, those over 50, women, non-Hispanic whites, and those with incomes far exceeding the federal poverty threshold. These patterns likely reflect the burden of uncompensated care among former inmates, who have both a greater than average need for care and higher than average levels of uninsurance. State-level analyses solidify these claims. Increases in the number of former inmates are associated simultaneously with increases in the percentage of uninsured within a state and increases in emergency room use per capita, both net of controls for between-state heterogeneity. Our analyses establish an intersection between systems of care and corrections, linked by inadequate financial and administrative mechanisms for delivering services to former inmates.

Why Restorative Justice Will Not Reduce Incarceration

Restorative justice goals are frequently articulated on micro, meso and macro levels. One macro-level goal frequently made by advocates is that restorative justice may serve as a viable means of reducing incarceration. Focusing on Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, this article argues that while these countries have seen some of the largest increases in incarceration within western industrialized countries, as well as the most widespread use of restorative justice, there is little evidence that restorative justice has reduced prison populations. It also argues that as currently practiced there is little reason to assume that restorative justice will have a significant impact on incarceration in the near future. Attention is given to the problem of the ‘transformation assumption’ inherent in restorative justice that micro-level changes in offender behaviours or restorative outcomes can significantly affect the larger social structures of punishment and incarceration.

Studying Discretion in the Processes that Generate Criminal Justice Sanctions

This paper presents a typology of discretion that differs from the standard typology of discretion in the legal literature: Type A discretion, which is the generally recognized discretion of individual actors to make decisions within a set of laws and rules, and Type B discretion, which is the crafting of laws and setting of rules in the first place. An analysis using aggregate data from 1992 to 2002 points to the prosecution stage as the primary source of Type A discretion that contributed to the massive increase in incarceration during this period. To understand how this could happen, this paper argues that actions need to be linked to outcomes. We identify three key outcomes of the sanctioning process—crime control, justice (guilt/innocence), racial disparity (fairness)—that deserve more attention from social scientists.

Overview of Substance Use Disorders and Incarceration of African American Males

Incarceration affects the lives of many African American men and often leads to poverty, ill health, violence, and a decreased quality of life. There has been an unprecedented increase in incarceration among African American males since 1970. In 2009, the incarceration rate among black males was 6.7 times that of white males and 2.6 times of Hispanic males. Substance abuse in African American males leads to higher mortality rates, high rates of alcohol-related problems, more likely to be victims of crimes, and HIV/AIDS. African Americans comprised only 14% of the U.S. population but comprised 38% of the jail population. The cost of incarcerating persons involved in substance related crimes has increased considerably over the past two decades in the U.S. A reduction in the incarceration rate for non-violent offences would save an estimated $17 billion per year. Substance use disorder makes the individual more prone to polysubstance use and leads to impulse control problems, selling drugs, and other crimes. The high rate of incarceration in U.S. may adversely affect health care, the economy of the country, and will become a burden on society. Implementation of good mental health care, treatment of addiction during and after incarceration will help to decrease the chances of reoffending. Therapeutic community programs with prison-based and specialized treatment facilities, cognitive behavioral therapy treatment for 91–180 days, and 12-step orientation with staff specialized in substance abuse can be helpful. It is essential for health care professionals to increase public awareness of substance abuse and find ways to decrease the high rates of incarceration.

Incarceration and Prisoner Reentry in the United States

This article addresses the reentry challenges faced by low-skilled men released from U.S. prisons. The author empirically characterizes the increases in incarceration occurring since 1970 and assesses the degree to which these changes result from changes in policy as opposed to changes in criminal behavior. The author discusses what is known about the children of inmates and the likelihood that a child in the United States has an incarcerated parent. The article then addresses the employment barriers that former prison inmates face, with a particular emphasis on how employers view criminal records in screening job applicants. Finally, the author discusses a number of alternative models for aiding the reentry of former inmates. Transitional cash assistance, the use of reentry plans, traditional workforce development efforts, and transitional jobs for former inmates all are among the tools used across the United States. The author reviews the existing evaluation literature on the effectiveness of these programmatic interventions.

Male Incarceration, the Marriage Market, and Female Outcomes

This paper studies how rising male incarceration has affected women through its effect on the marriage market. Variation in marriage-market shocks arising from incarceration is isolated using two facts: the tendency of people to marry within marriage markets defined by the interaction of race, location, and age and the fact that increases in incarceration have been very different across these three characteristics. Using a variety of estimation strategies, including difference and fixed effects models and TSLS models in which we use policy parameters to instrument for within-marriage market changes in incarceration, we find evidence that is, on the whole, consistent with the implications of the standard marriage-market model. In particular, higher male imprisonment appears to have lowered the likelihood that women marry, modestly reduced the quality of their spouses when they do marry, and shifted the gains from marriage away from women and toward men. The evidence suggests that women in affected markets have increased their schooling and labor supply in response to these changes.

The Impact of Adult Incarceration on Child Poverty: A County-Level Analysis, 1995-2007

Traditionally, research on the tremendous variation in the use of incarceration across time and space has focused on the issue of whether imprisoning more offenders reduces crime. More recently, research has begun to explore the collateral consequences of mass incarceration for the families and communities of those imprisoned. The current study adds to this burgeoning literature by examining the impact of incarceration rates on child poverty rates. Using a panel design for North Carolina county data, 1995-2007, we use instrumental variable techniques to disentangle the effect of incarceration on poverty from the effect of poverty on incarceration. The results indicate that increases in incarceration are associated with increases in child poverty rates. The impact of adult incarceration on child poverty appears especially pronounced in counties with a high proportion of non-white residents.